2014-10-24

One benefit of watching The A-Team growing up in the 80s was the useful tactic of distraction to divide and conquer to overcome your enemy.

Every ploy devised by them was based on a distraction.

Government is awesome at this. By design or otherwise. Take the CDC admitting they were taken 'by surprise' by ebola. Now. You would think one of the most quoted government agencies in the American bureaucratic kingdom would sort of kinda be on the ball for such things. But, alas, as we've seen with FEMA, and now the VA and Secret Service as we've discovered (and some would add the Presidency itself), hacks and incompetent people who shouldn't be running such agencies consistently and spectacularly fail when a crisis hits them.

Canada hasn't been tested all that much so it would be interesting to see the level of preparedness this country has on a constant basis. I'm guessing marginally better - if at all - than the USA. Just guessing. They didn't look overly organized the other day and it was thanks to one awesome guy - Sgt. at Arms Kevin Vickers - who may as well come out of a comic book there wasn't more bloodshed.

Anyway. It is true we've become so obsessed at micro-managing people's lives we forget the whole purpose of what the mandate of these agencies originally were. Hint: They were not about sugary drinks. Alas, as we've seen, all government bureaucracies expand their duties - called mission drift - usually entering the private realm and attacking private choices. Government agencies NEVER stick to their original mission. EVER. That's why I never believe them when they say 'Oh no, it would never go "there' when we all know 'there' is the end game'.

Someone has to justify their jobs, right?

******

B-b-but, T.C.! Things change! Change demands more governance!

Laugh. Call me Dale Gribble. I don't care none.

Remember two summers ago it looked like every kid was drowning in backyard swimming pools? People were losing their minds. Talking heads on the radio were talking about permits for swimming pools, stringent measures for fences, one clown even wondered if we should have pools at all (Yes, yes. The 'who needs a big house?!" and 'no one needs that much money!' shrill pseudo-intellectual theory).

You can't observe an outlier event - e.g. terrorist attack - and go straight to demanding gun control that affects thousands upon thousands of law-abiding people when the statistics simply don't back up such a measure. It's irrational.

Yet guess what the narrative is in the aftermath of Ottawa? More powers to the government and gun policy.

"....kiss my ass..." Former Attorney General of Alabama Bill Baxley, responding to a KKK hate letter during his famous 1976 prosecution of Robert Chambliss for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings in 1963.

We possess all this information and little wisdom. In other words, the smarter we get the dumber we are. -The Commentator

Half-truths used to make you popular. Today,
quarter-truths make you famous. -The Commentator

I'm stuck in every era...except my own. -The Commentator

If they really are so great, tell me why can't they at least take this place and take it straight? Why always stoned, like Hippie Johnny? -"I'm straight" by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers

True grace and class is when criticism is met with a "thanks". -The Commentator

The reality is that people become managers because they were simply the next available person. -The Commentator

When mediocrity complains it gets a bonus. When it yells it gets promoted. -The Commentator

The heart has its reasons which reason does not know. -Blaise Pascal

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. -James Madison

My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: 'I don’t know.... -Nassim Taleb

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell

The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it. -Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Affairs that depend on many rarely succeed. -Francesco Guicciardini

The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident. -Francesco Guicciardini

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness. -Seneca

If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. -Thomas S. Szasz

I love you guys. -Coach Norman Dale, Hoosiers

Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge. -Francesco Guicciardini

Without writing and wine there is no civilization. -The Commentator

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. -Tacitus

I have a dream...
-Martin Luther King

What, to eternity, is a thousand years? Not so much as the blinking of an eye to the turning of the slowest of the spheres.
-Dante Alighieri

The Iron Curtain is no more than the ideology of political correctness has erected a metal fence against the human spirit. -The Commentator

All truths passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. -Arthur Schopenhauer

To know nothing and be able to express it. -Karl Kraus

It may be that Western culture will indeed go: The lack of conviction of many of those who should be its defenders and the passionate intensity of it's accusers may well join to complete it's destruction. But if it does go, the men and women of all the continents will thereby be impoverished and endangered. -Bernard Lewis

People's political perceptions are directly inverted to the reality. -The Commentator

The only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity. The only joy to be trusted is the joy on the far side of a broken heart; the only life to be trusted is the life on the far side of death. -Alfred North Whitehead

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.
-Thomas Jefferson

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a time of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
-Dante Alighieri

You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is: never try.
-Homer Simpson

In order to spend on one side, Nature is forced to economize on the other.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe